Chapter Nine Maddie #2
She rolls her eyes and mutters something under her breath.
“You’re not hearing me, Maddie. You know, I read up on how you completely salvaged part of the Wade Foundation after the embezzlement scandal and managed to save face for the family.
I can’t help but wonder if you’re less politician’s wife material and more politician material. ”
I don’t really know what to say. Thank you? Pretend that I’ve never even considered the idea? Because I have. Plenty.
But I’ve never had the money or connections Gentry has. And if people had a problem with a state assemblymember standing next to a fat woman, I can’t imagine they’d be all that thrilled to vote for one.
I’m honored that Miranda would even think such a thing, however. Not because I don’t think I could do the job, but because someone else sees it too. It’s nice. It’s validating. Even if it’s never going to happen.
THIS PARTICULAR SECTION of Intro to Government is very heavy with Greek life students and athletes. Even though it’s probably not fair to judge any of my students, it’s very hard not to slip into old fat-kid trauma where I am in natural opposition with this exact demographic.
Being unshowered and covered in coffee stains is not helping the situation.
The class is already full, which means I have an audience as I walk to my podium. A group of carefully unmade up girls in very chic athleisure watch my every step as they whisper back and forth.
One thing I can say about my relationship with Gentry and all the media training we did is that I at least know how to act confident when I do not feel confident. So I hold my head high like coffee stains are the latest trend and I’m ahead of the curve.
“All right, class,” I say, but my voice comes out frog-like. I clear my throat again, but it takes three tries to finally settle the class.
“Pig in shit,” some douchebag says in two coughs.
I glance up, with one brow severely arched, and it’s enough to quiet the class entirely.
“Right, we’re starting off with a quiz today,” I say, and elect two students from the front row to help me hand out the department-mandated quiz that’s one of the uniform requirements across all Intro to Government classes.
“Professor,” a guy at the back of the room calls, “you didn’t even remind us.”
“This quiz has been in the syllabus since day one and is one of your required grades. If you make anything below a ninety, you are allowed to make corrections for half credit.”
There are a few groans, but the class quickly quiets except for a single phone playing videos.
It takes me a minute to find the culprits. A girl and a guy in the back center of the auditorium are doing a poor job of hiding their snickering as they watch something on the guy’s screen.
“Please have some respect for your fellow classmates,” I say to the class at large. “Silence your cell phones and sit quietly even if you decide not to take the quiz.”
The girl pushes the guy’s phone away as she hunches over her quiz.
Even though all I want to do is hide behind my podium so no one can focus on what a mess I am, I walk around the auditorium because it feels like the responsible thing to do.
The sounds start again, and it’s even louder than it was the first time.
“Seriously?” I ask, turning back down the steps to the absolute man-child who needs his screen time.
I surprise myself and the whole row as I shimmy down the aisle to where the guy is sitting, still refusing to turn off his phone. The girl beside him purposefully angles her back to him and it takes everything in me not to say, Clever girl.
He’s wearing sweatpants and a ratty T-shirt that says MY GRANDDAUGHTER IS A PROUD ASTRA COPPERHEAD.* I refuse to smile at the irony of his shirt.
Students tuck up their legs and kick their bags out of the way to avoid them getting stomped on.
I could really use Fern’s Doc Martens right now.
And I’m suddenly very nostalgic for a time when I wore stompy combat boots and ripped tights with short skirts and barked at boys who approached me and my friends at bars when we were sending clearly disinterested signals.
A time before Gentry convinced me that in order to effect change in the system, you had to become the system.
I point toward the door so Grandma Boy understands what I mean when I say, “You’re being asked to leave the room. You can make up the quiz later.”
“Are you shitting me?” he says. “This isn’t high school, you psycho. I’m paying to be here.”
I take his paper that has nothing on it but his name and a dick and balls that look like a smiley face. It is so damn cathartic as I fold the quiz in half and say, “You don’t have to make up the quiz later, then. I’ll grade you on what you have.”
It’s only then that I realize he’s filming me.
“You’re live,” he says with a smirk. “Everyone say hi to my cow of a professor who thinks she can just make me leave class like this isn’t a free country. Freedom of assembly!”
“That’s not how freedom of assembly works, you stale doughnut. Maybe you would know that if your brain wasn’t made of trending sounds and memes.”
The girl beside him snaps the phone out of his hand and rolls her eyes. “He’s just being a dick, Professor Kowalczk.”
He snatches his phone back from her and pushes past me on his way out of the classroom.
Fuck. I hate that he got a rise out of me.
Every single head is up and very much not looking at their quizzes.
“Ten more minutes,” I tell the class as I make my way back down to the podium. “Then we’re moving on to the lecture.”
I want to go home. I want to go home. I want to go home.
But where the fuck is home?